Tak. Tak. Tak.
The uneven sounds of keyboard echoed through the quiet room.
It was mostly dark — the only light were of the monitors, their pale glow washing over a figure hunched in his chair, fingers tapping across the keys with an intense, focused expression.
"Huh... I should clean this room," the figure muttered, eyes drifting to his desk.
It was buried under countless papers and food wrapper but mostly crushed papers.
"Meh. I'll do it tomorrow."
With that, his gaze returned to his monitor.
[Would you like to create a new character?]
[▶ Yes] [▷ No]
He didn't actually want to click it, But it had to be done.
Click.
A flood of information filled the screen — a pre-installed template he had made long before.
Tak. Tak. Tak.
He typed continuously, stopping every now and then, second-guessing himself, rewriting, deleting and starting over.
after a continuos war for an hour it was finnaly done.
-----------------------------
[Name]: Ikarus _____
[Nickname]: None
[Age]: 16
[Height]: 4'8"
[status]: Unawakened
· · · · ·
· · · ·
· ·
·
[Description]: A boy with low physical health.Blind. Mute. Unable to taste or smell. The black sheep of his family, has pitch black hair and eyes with body as thin as you can get.
[Strengths]: Astral Sight — not his own. Artificial.
· · · · ·
· · · ·
· ·
·
-----------------------------
He stared at the screen for a long moment thinking about his choice.
'Should I really create this character?'The thought lingered. But it wasn't optional — Ikarus had to exist.
The story needed him desperately.
Still... it had been harder to write than he expected.
He couldn't even begin to truly imagine being in the character's shoes.
{ No sight } — there goes YouTube, the one thing that kept him company on quiet nights.
{ No taste } — and he was a foodie, someone who measured good days by what he ate.
{ No voice } — well, that one stung a little less. It wasn't like he talked to people much anyway.
But the pain was the one thing that bothered him the most.
'I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.'.He exhaled slowly, fingers hovering above the keyboard.
Then —
[Ding!!]
A notification blinked in the corner of his monitor making his eyes shifted towards it.
Click.
[BossyBitchEnergy]: Eyo, the last volume was lit. So, when are you sending the next one?
"Hah." He exhaled as his fingers began typing.
[SockWithAuthority]: For fvck's sake, can't you wait? and I'm still designing the characters.
[BossyBitchEnergy]:WHAT!!. you're STILL designing?? urghhhh...
BossyBitchEnergy was his first reader — or more accurately, his one and only beta reader.
The one person who had shown any genuine interest in the story.
Everyone else he'd shown it to had either said it wasn't good, or just straightly calling it "dogshit".
[SockWithAuthority]: Why do you even like this story anyway?
He genuinely wanted to know.
[BossyBitchEnergy]: i have already answered to that question, hey btw suckwithauthority, open your door — I sent you something.
As always they were deflecting the question.
[SockWithAuthority]: What?? How do you even know my address?? And for the nth time, it's SOCK. S-O-C-K.
[BossyBitchEnergy]: haha, check the new updates dummy. anyways open the door open it, open it, open it...
[SockWithAuthority]: okay, okay, hold on.
He pushed back from his chair, the wheels scraping against the floor.
The address thing still nagged at him as he moved through the darkness of his room, navigating by dim light by the monitors.
He reached the door, turned the handle, and pulled it open.
A box sat on the floor in front of his house.
***
He placed the box on his desk, right on top of the wrappers and opened it.
they were books, or more precisely they were physical copies of his novel.
All of his chapters existed only as digital prints, and the physical books meant more to him than he could express.
Especially when they came from his first reader.
He scanned the stack, counting instinctively and stopped.
He had only written six volumes while the seventh was still in progress, sitting half-finished on his monitor.
Yet the box held seven books, matching exactly the length he had always planned for the series.
He reached for the last one.
The cover was strange.It had a silhouette of a boy hanging from a tree with blood dripping out of his body.
It looked more like a horror novel than a fantasy one.
He turned it over in his hands. Before opening it, he half-expected to find blank pages inside, or maybe some elaborate fan theory they'd decided to print and bind for the joke of it.
That would've been on-brand for them.
But when he opened it and started reading, the joke theory dissolved.
The words on the page mirrored his outline exactly - The plot beats, the structure, the tone. Even the writing style was his, down to the small habits he'd never consciously noticed in himself until he saw them reflected back.
'How.'
He hadn't sent them the outline, he was certain of that.
So how could she possibly know?
He set the book down and pulled up the chat, his fingers moving fast on the keyboard.
[SockWithAuthority]: you bitch, how did you get the outline? and how did you copy my writing style??
The reply came quickly.
But it wasn't what he expected.
[BossBitchEnergy]: hey, read the whole book. it'll help you. and btw — you don't have much time left.
He stared at the screen.
[SockWithAuthority]: WHAT. what are you talking about. explain it. now.
No response.
He slammed on his keyboard's keys until they were on the verge of breaking.
After some time he calmed down and picked up the 7th book, starting to read once again.
A few pages later he reached the part where he hadn't completed outlining the novel yet — he still had to think about what direction the story would take.
But before he could get there, the letters on the page strangely started moving on their own.
"What the fuck—"
He screamed and threw the book away from him and fell backward- It was creepy as hell.
The letters that were moving on the page had now seeped out of the book entirely, flowing out rapidly on the ground — and now, they were heading straight towards him.
"Get away, get away!" he shooed at them, crawling across the ground, desperately trying to keep them from touching him.
But they reached him anyway. They climbed up onto his body as it trembled violently.
I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die—
His body twisted in different directions, moving inhumanly.
Then after a few seconds, it stopped.
He was dead.
Or so, He thought.
[TRANSMIGRATING....]